Energy Performance of Buildings (England and Wales) (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2015

Debate between Baroness Crawley and Lord Teverson

Wednesday 16th December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Teverson]

The SI certainly relates to public buildings. I will come on to explain why it is important to the trading standards side. But I welcome the noble Lord’s intervention. The regulations are partly about public buildings but I had also felt that they were partly to do with private buildings as well. I am happy to be corrected if I am wrong. This is an area of great importance and one that we need to keep on the agenda. I understand the resourcing issue entirely, but this is an area where trading standards generally needs to be involved and should be happy to be involved, subject to that funding.

What I find shameful is that, when the Government are trying to move forward in areas such as climate change, energy efficiency and other areas, DCLG has moved in the other direction. The vandalism of taking out the zero-carbon homes and the commercial buildings targets for 2019 was one of the most regrettable actions of this Government to date in this area. While I understand that there are issues around this particular statutory instrument, which I do not think are so important, the department has been woeful in its actions in this area since this Government came into power. After the great agreement that we have had in Paris, I very much hope that the department will start to get in line with the rest of the Government’s aspirations and repair some of these areas. I thank the noble Lord for his contribution.

[Baroness Crawley (Lab)]

My Lords, I support the objections to these regulations so ably raised by my noble friend Lord McKenzie of Luton this evening. I also ask the Minister why no proper consultation was considered necessary.

As president of the Chartered Trading Standards Institute, I know at first hand how this wonderful profession of trading standards officers is now stretched to the limit. They have experienced, as my noble friend has said, an average of 40% cuts in funding over the last five years and up to 80% in some trading standards services up and down the country. In this time of austere cutbacks their duties have not decreased. As well as all their other responsibilities to which my noble friend referred—consumer protection, e-crime, doorstep crime, food standards, animal health and welfare, age-restricted sales, and weights and measures—they are also, as we know, at this time of year especially, Santa’s little helpers when it comes to product safety. For example, trading standards revealed recently that of the 17,000 hoverboards imported from beyond the European Union for Christmas that they have inspected, 15,000 have failed basic safety tests. That is 88%. This is not a service with time on its hands.